


From Wintered Veins We Bloom

by Razzledazzy



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Basically an episode 1 retelling, M/M, Soul Bond, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, Soulmates, Telepathy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-31
Updated: 2018-01-31
Packaged: 2019-03-11 00:31:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,755
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13513005
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Razzledazzy/pseuds/Razzledazzy
Summary: Things begin a bit differently when souls are on the line. They still cascade into the river of time, following the marks of fate that have been set out before them, but not in the way the universe always anticipates.Or; his soulmate mark is just one more thing for Katsuki Yuuri to be anxious about, especially when he doesn't remember meeting his soulmate.





	From Wintered Veins We Bloom

Yuuri woke up feeling like shit. Given that he had no memory of how the gala had ended, he wasn’t exactly surprised by this. The taste of day old alcohol in his mouth and the soreness that came from ill advised activities were familiar enough that he knew exactly what flavor of bad decision he'd made last night.

He’d made worse life decisions than getting blackout drunk after shaming his entire family and letting every one of his supporters down… okay, so nothing immediately came to mind, but he was sure that something was comparable.

Unfortunately, bad life choices tend to snowball downhill instead of fixing themselves.

Rubbing at his eyes, Yuuri blinked sleep away as the world went from very fuzzy, to only a little fuzzy. His eyes were drawn down to his arm, the shocking blue of his soulmark catching his attention like a foghorn.

Yuuri gasped, flailing out of his bed, and fell onto the floor.

_Glasses…… glasses… there!_

He fumbled for his glasses, the lenses still smudged with yesterday’s tears, cleaning them off with the hotel sheet just made it worse. Wait? Was that a scratch?

“ _Fuck,_ ” Yuuri hissed. Whatever, it wasn’t important right now.

He dug the heel of his hand into his eyes, rubbing it harshly before putting the glasses on.

The shocking deep blue was still there, it hadn’t left during the frantic minute it had taken to locate his eyes. The blue was… strange, he’d always imagined the ocean twisting along his arm in dark greens, like Hasetsu’s ocean. Waves crashed up against the shore near his wrist in slow motion. Tiny pebbles being pushed along his bones with each wave. Seabirds circled his arm near his elbow just above the horizon, Yuuri had always thought of them as brown sandpipers, but now he could see that they were white seagulls.

He'd been told it was uncommon for someone to have such and intricately detailed soulmark, one that covered his entire forearm, front and back. That he would have a stronger than normal connection to his soulmate because of it, whoever they were.

It had always given him something to look forward too when his anxiety surged out of control. The empty lines on his skin comforted him through some of his worst anxiety attacks. Just the thought that there was someone out there whose broken pieces matched his own gave him a sense of calm. He imagined someone lonely and a little lost, but strong enough to handle the storms of emotion that Yuuri barely managed to get through alone. A place he would finally fit without struggling.

At some point Yuuri met his soulmate last night.

And he had no idea who it was.

His heart sank into his stomach, a counterbalance to the nausea rising in his throat. He felt a faint wave of concern that wasn’t his own. It was uncanny, like the ghost of an emotion.

Yuuri ran to the bathroom.

 

* * *

 

Victor had locked himself in his room, clothes thrown everywhere. He’d only brought one or two long-sleeved shirts, and he needed them _now_. The twisted Japanese maple on his arm had blossomed with vivid reds and browns, its small flower buds interspersed throughout the leaves. They weren’t close to blooming yet, and white frost had gathered on the edge of the leaves overnight. Earlier it had been buffeted by wind, but the leaves were still vibrant and healthy looking. Now they wilted under an unseen pressure.

It worried him. Soulmarks weren’t known for being so active. Most accounts of them moving happened when soulmates were were experiencing similar emotional highs.

Victor had always assumed that meant sex, which clearly wasn’t the case.

The leaves shook on his arm, blown by some invisible force.

He traced his fingers over the delicately shifting lines. If he was being honest, it worried him. Was his soulmate okay? The ice hadn’t been there before last night. He’d been studying his soul mark for years, having long ago looked up which plant it was. The knobbled branches twisting around his arm proved to be very distinctive. The other components of it, less so. The little beetle that sometime buzzed around his forearm shone with iridescence as it huddled into a knot in the tree, away from the wind. The snake had circled away from its normal spot among the roots and curled out onto bones of his wrist like it was sunning itself. He hadn’t expected the snake to fill in with spots of dull orange and mottled green. He still wasn’t sure what his chance of identifying either of them were, or what they could tell him about his soulmate.

Covering it up for competitions was always difficult. He’d always been worried he would meet his soulmate during a competition and not see the design fill with color under the flashy outfits he wore.

Victor tossed a three-quarters sleeved shirt aside, opting to check his phone. As always, it was overflowing with notifications. Most of which he ignored. There were a few pictures from Christophe though, which he saved.

Victor’s finger paused over one of the pictures.

Katsuki Yuuri stared back at him, slight smile on his face and glasses nowhere to be found.

His soulmate.

_Katsuki Yuuri dragged him into the dance battle with a forcefulness he hadn’t expected from the shorter man. He’d laughed, and Yuuri’s hand slipped down his arm to catch on his wrist. Victor’s heart stopped for the second it took for his soulmark to tingle to life under his dress shirt. Yuuri’s mark filled with splashes of dark blue under the edge of his rolled up sleeve, an ocean filling with color right before Victor’s eyes. Yuuri seemed oblivious to it, he had no idea how, He felt shaken to his very core by the faint tingling sensation prickling his skin._

_His eyes scanned the room. Had anyone else seen that? He made eye contact with Chris, who had his phone in hand and his mouth open._

_Victor glared in a way that he hoped would be threatening, but probably just looked panicked. If Chris posted those photos- or god forbid if he’d gotten video of it- and the skating community got ahold of them…_

_He didn’t want that for Yuuri. Not right after a defeat like he’d had today._

_“One second, I’m going to set my drink down,” Victor excused himself, making a beeline for Christophe._

_“Don’t post those anywhere, and can you try and keep an eye on the others too? He’s had a bad day, he doesn’t need this kind of press. Sara and Mila will probably help if you need them too,” Victor pleaded, handing his glass of champagne off to Chris._

_Chris thought for a moment, before nodding. “You can count on me. I would never want anything to intrude on a new soulbound. Do you want me to tell anyone else?”_

_“Not if they don’t already know. Also, get some good pictures for me yeah?”_

_“Sure, sure, whatever you say.”_

So far, things were going well. His phone wasn’t blowing up with headlines about Yuuri or himself. Christophe was a damn miracle worker.

Victor had thought about asking around for Yuuri’s number, but he didn’t know who would have it. In essence, he was stuck. He had no idea what the protocol for meeting your soulmate was when your soulmate was blind drunk. They hadn’t had a chance to talk about it last night, and Victor never figured out how to pull him away from the party for the privacy needed to bring his attention to it in the first place.

What if Yuuri didn’t even like him? He'd just won the Grand Prix Final. What if Yuuri resented that? He’d never expected to fall for another skater. A competitor. How was he supposed to compete knowing that doing so would hurt his soulmate’s chances of succeeding?  

That was, if he even decided to keep competing. Quitting had been in the back of his mind all season, there was nothing new he could bring to the ice that someone else couldn't do better. 

Anxiety buzzed in Victor’s mind, stronger and stronger until it plateaued, making him queasy. Victor pressed his free hand against his stomach. Is this what Yuuri was feeling right now? It felt horrible.

Maybe he should go and check on him?

But how would he do that? He could track down Celestino, ask him what room Yuuri was staying in. But that would raise questions he wasn’t sure he could answer alone.

It was only a matter of time before people noticed the root of his soul mark that wound down around the back of his hand in soft browns. Unless he wore gloves all the time. He was Russian, he could get away with it.

Maybe he could use his soulmark as a divining rod and let it lead him to Yuuri? That probably wouldn’t work. Then again, nothing about his soulmark was standard, so why start applying arbitrary rules to it now?

_What if Yuuri didn’t acknowledge him as his soulmate?_

Victor froze in the middle of his room.

He couldn’t do this now. He’d just won his fifth consecutive Grand Prix gold. He couldn’t sweep into Yuuri’s life like a tsunami, changing everything and destroying things in his wake. Everyone would expect things from Yuuri, from him, for one of them to quit or something else completely ridiculous like changing to pairs skating.

The thought of Yuuri quitting gave Victor’s heart a painful squeeze. That was a tragedy he would not stand for, even if he had to end his own career to prevent it.

Victor sighed and pulled on a blue long-sleeved shirt. He had to do something. Talk to someone that could help him figure this out.  

Unfortunately, the only person he could think of was Christophe.

By the time he tracked the Swiss skater down, breakfast was nearly over.

“Christophe, I need your help,” Victor urged, pulling the other skater to the side in a quiet hallway.

“Yuuri is gone,” Christophe said without preamble.

“What?” _Already? They had just found each other and-_

“He seemed pretty panicked about something, and miserably hungover. Wouldn’t be surprised if he didn’t remember most of last night. Bolted down the hall with his bag twenty minutes ago, Mila and Sara tried to stall him but,” Christophe ended with a shrug.

That wasn’t good. “Do you think he remembers-”

“I don’t think he even noticed the Meeting, to be honest.”

“I was going to say: ‘Do you think he remembers inviting me to Hasetsu to be his coach?’ but okay, let’s throw every crisis together and deal with it the Russian way.”

“What’s the Russian way?”

“Not dealing with anything until winter forces us to.”

The bones of a plan formed in his mind. If he couldn’t do anything now, then he needed to wait for the right time. He only hoped he would know when that time was.

 

* * *

 

Yuuri didn’t know what happened to his life. Well, he knew. He’d been thrashed at the Grand Prix, snubbed by his idol, and forgotten by his soulmate all in the same day. It was no surprise the off season had been hard on him.

Hard enough for him to quit.

Home hadn’t changed much, the shore of Hasetsu moved with each wave, being pushed and pulled around. Always changing and never yielding.

Yuuri couldn’t identify with it. Whenever he thought of the ocean, his mind circled back to the ever moving, ever changing blue mark on his arm. Today there was a hermit crab crawling over the pebbles at his wrist.

He said he would quit, he thought he’d wanted to quit.

Yet, here he was in the center of the Ice Castle, skates on, music queued. Just one routine to see if he could pull it off. If the hermit crab could pull itself over a rock twice his size, Yuuri could do this.

The music swelled, and Yuuri let his heart glide across the ice. He was out of shape and planned to pull some of the quads back to triples to avoid injury.

But on every lead up, he’d throw himself into the air with reckless abandon, over rotating into a quad almost every time.

In a performance where points didn’t matter, being able to push himself without worrying about scores and deductions, quads were simple.

For once, he could afford to get lost in the feelings and sounds of the rink. The gentle crush of the ice with each move, the sharp sound of a skate kicking off and landing, things that gave the musical arrangement an extra kick of percussion.

It shifted the tone of the song from from melancholic to longing.

He ended the program and came down from his daze, realizing that his childhood friend was clapping for him.

He smiled at her, but didn’t think anything of it.

The hermit crab on his arm pulled itself into new shell.

 

* * *

 

Victor watched his soul mark over the first few months with an intensity usually saved for starving men. Every time it shook or lost leaves his worry for Yuuri cranked up a few levels. It was obvious he wasn’t doing well, hell, Victor wasn’t feeling that great either.

He had to do something, but he didn’t have the guts to just show up in Japan unannounced. Not if Yuuri wasn’t willing to talk to him, or god forbid, didn’t remember.

And then a few of the blossoms started to open, the branches stopped wilting and what little leaves it had left fluttered in the wind instead of shuddering under it.

The next day, his text alert went off and Victor picked up his phone.

_[SMS from Cristophe] You’re going to want to see this._

Following the link led him to a video site that wasn’t used much outside of Japan, the kind that required an account to log into. Victor followed the prompts with his rudimentary skill in Japanese and accessed the video.

The first bars of Stammi Vicino were immediately recognizable, as was the lone figure in the center of the rink.

Victor could tell it was Yuuri before the video zoomed in.

He was mesmerized by the video. Watching as his soulmate threw himself into each jump without looking for a landing point. At home on that specific rink, unwatched, he bloomed in a way that Victor had never seen during their few competitions together.

Some of the jumps were downgraded, but most of them were quads. It wouldn’t have been a high scoring routine, some of the jumps would have been thrown out for occurring multiple times in the program, but it was fascinating to watch.

Victor’s first coach had always said that figure skating was a language all its own, and for the first time a while, Victor listened.

It called him to come home.

 

* * *

 

Everything in Yuuri’s life was terrible, thanks very much universe. He’d woken up to the fact that not only had Yuuko’s daughters taped and uploaded his routine, it had gone viral among the skating community. Yuuri didn’t even want to think about checking his twitter or his instagram for another three years or so. He didn’t even want to check his private accounts. Phichit had access to those and he _would_ have questions.  

The second horrifying thing was that Victor Nikiforov had found his soulmate. Someone had gotten a picture of the brown root on the back of his hand, with a _yamakagashi_ nestled between the root and the bone of his wrist. He’d been at the airport, probably getting on a plane to see his soulmate.

Yuuri couldn’t help the venom that wound itself up in his throat at the thought. He shouldn’t begrudge Victor his happiness, but did he need so much of it? He’d been smiling in the airport picture, looking down at something on his phone.

Needless to say, the skating world was in an uproar and Yuuri didn’t even want to look. That didn’t stop Yuuko though.

“Yuuri-kun, look, people are saying you’re his soulmate because of the video! Isn’t that adorable? Complete nonsense, but it’s cute.”

She shoved her phone in front of him, and Yuuri resisted the knee jerk reaction to slap it away. He didn’t need ‘phone in his udon’ in addition to all of his other problems today.

The smile slipped off of Yuuko’s face. “Yuuri?”

He shrugged at her without looking up.

She took in a soft breath, leaning closer to him.

“Yuuri, you’ve worn nothing but long sleeves since you’ve gotten home. I thought it was because you’re embarrassed about being out of shape but-”

“Don’t.”

Yuuko’s breath left in a gasp, “ _Yuuri._ ”

He put his chopsticks down and pushed his food away, some of the broth splashing over the side of the bowl.

“It happened during the competition, I was distracted and didn’t realize until it was too late, they were gone.”

“Oh, Yuuri, is that why you skated so badly?”

He flinched, well, wasn’t that just a perfect excuse? But the Meeting hadn’t happened until after he blew every hope and dream for his future out of the water. Unable to answer either way, he shrugged. She could take it however he liked.

“...can I see it?”

The question stretched out into thin air, he could refuse, it would be well within his rights too. He looked around for Axel, Lutz, and Loop. Seeing the room clear of the triplets, he rolled up his sleeve up to his elbow.

Yuuko gasped, her fingers jerking as if to keep from touching the rolling ocean. “It’s so beautiful, it almost looks like the Baltic Sea or somewhere up north.”

He gave a one armed shrug. “It’s not Hasetsu, that’s for sure.”

Yuuko looked at his arm for a moment longer, her eyes tracing the movement of the seagulls as the circled his skin lazily. Then she leaned forward and ruffled his hair. “Don’t look so sad, Yuuri, things will work out! I know it in my heart. Don’t you remember? I’m always right about these things.”

It was a nice thought. Unbelievable, but nice.

 

* * *

 

This was a mistake. This was a huge, terrible mistake. Not only had someone gotten a picture of his soul mark; which, by the way, was a huge invasion of privacy, but now he was second guessing all of his decisions that led up to this point.

The feeling of misery drifting across the bond didn't make him feel better, but it strengthened his resolve not to turn tail and flee.

He’d packed up and moved all of his things to an entirely different country, overnight, with no plan for where he was going to stay.

What the hell was wrong with him? What was it about Katsuki Yuuri that sent his common sense careening off the edge of a cliff?

He’d brought his dog, for fucks sake.

Makkachin ran forward ahead of him, circling back every so often to push on his legs. It was almost like the dog wanted him to enter the hot springs hotel more than he did.

He couldn’t do this, he was frozen in full on stage fright. The kind he hadn’t felt since he was fifteen. Yuuri’s parents were in there, they owned the place, he knew that when he googled it. What could he say? ‘Hello, I’m your son’s soulmate, mind if I stay in your house for a while? Oh, what do you mean I’ll have to talk to him?’

He swiped open his phone and opened his text messages, selecting the most recent one. His fingers hovered over the keys, not typing out anything.

So what if he was scared? Telling everyone else would do absolutely nothing. He just needed to face his fears.

And then the door opened.

Victor almost shrieked, grabbing at Makkachin’s collar to keep him from bounding into the building.

_Why this, why now, this was so stup- oh, it’s not Yuuri. Oh, thank god._

The older man stopped and stared, slack jawed at the foreign man on his front porch. He rattled something off in quick Japanese that blew in and out of Victor’s ears before he could comprehend it.

Victor flailed his free hand out and spoke in Japanese, “Hold- hold please.”

The man nodded vigorously, setting down his watering can to grab Victor’s free hand and pull him inside the hotel, “Come, come in, wow, Victor Nikiforov here in Hasetsu? Just wait until-” the rest of the sentence was lost to Victor.

Shit, he’d thought his Japanese was passible.

Victor waited for him to stop speaking before he tried again,“I came to rent a room for- for long term? I brought money. The post office is holding my things.”

“Nonsense, we can’t take your money! We’ll get your things into one of our best rooms.”

Victor flushed, “I can’t possibly-” This was Yuuri’s family, he couldn’t impose like this, they hadn’t even… spoken since the banquet.

The banquet.

“At the banquet, after the Grand Prix,” he said Grand Prix in English, he didn’t know the Japanese equivalent, “Yuuri asked me to be his coach, I don’t think that he remembers- he was very... tired when he asked. I’ve been considering it and decided I would accept.”

Yuuri’s father- and really, he should ask for the man’s name at some point- grabbed onto Victor’s arm and started to shake his hand.

“Hold on,” and boy was he glad he’d learned that particular phrase in Japanese, “Do you think that you could wait to tell Yuuri until tomorrow? I want to tell him myself and I’m-” he reached into his mind for an excuse, anything to buy himself a little more time to figure out what the fuck he was going to say. “I’m jet lagged! I need to get some sleep.”

Perfect, probably the smartest thing he’d ever said.

“Oh sure, sure, we’ll just tell him some handsome foreign guest is staying, he won’t pry more than that.”

The longer Yuuri’s father spoke, the easier it was for Victor to catch all of his words. Maybe this trip wasn’t such a terrible idea. He could pull this off.

The alternative was too terrifying to think about.

 

* * *

 

The rest of the day was a little bit better. Minako and Yuuko had their own special way of cheering him up. Today they distracted him with all of their small problems. Minako complained about being an old maid and Yuuko threw her snack at their ballet teacher for being ridiculous, she was barely into her thirties. That wasn’t _old_.

The good mood didn’t last though, as soon as he got home it dipped again. He was anxious, but he couldn't identify the source of his anxiety. To top things off his parents were both acting incredibly strange. Instead of acknowledging the crash in his mood, Yuuri went to his room and locked himself in.

He’d look at things with fresh eyes tomorrow, deal with everything then.

Ignoring his instincts for self preservation, Yuuri checked his phone one last time before bed.

The speculation online had reached a fever pitch around who Victor’s soul mate was, and why he’d suddenly left the country. Coach Yakov didn’t have anything to say about it, but Yuri Plisetsky was another matter. It’s more like he wouldn’t shut up about Victor abandoning all his responsibilities.

No one was paying him any mind. When it came to soulmates, the world fell in love with the idea of romance over practicality. So much of Victor’s fanclub was swooning over thoughts of how their Meeting must have gone, and only a few extreme fans were bitter about not being his soulmate.

Feeling petty, Yuuri liked Yuri’s comment and closed his phone. He wasn’t going to let Yuri’s rudeness at the Grand Prix color their interactions forever- but there was no reason for his actions that would make Yuuri forgive him without an apology.

Love for the sport had to have limits.

Tossing his phone onto the corner of his bed, Yuuri rolled over and went to sleep.

 

* * *

 

It was freezing, absolutely fucking frigid. Victor had no idea that Japan could get this cold in Spring.

He’d slept fitfully, always rolling over to check his phone to see how much time had passed since the last time he'd rolled over.

Halfway through the night he unpacked most of his things looking for his heavy Russian blanket. It was in the last box he checked, of course, buried under half a dozen junior level medals. He wasn’t sure why he’d even brought them, but it felt unlucky to leave them in Russia when he wanted Yuuri to succeed.

The coach thing had been in the back of his mind all day, he couldn’t… _not_ help Yuuri. All of that raw potential obscured and overshadowed by his anxiety was heartbreaking to see. If he could just help him grow into his hard earned skills and have enough confidence in himself to throw himself into quads like no one was watching; then maybe he could get the whole world to see Yuuri the way he did.

The video was proof that it was possible.

Fuck if he knew the first thing about being a coach though. Victor sighed, turning over on the futon again. Maybe Yakov was right, this was stupid, but he was here now. And he wasn’t about to leave without seeing Yuuri.

Victor rolled off the futon, he’d blamed the chill on the ground level bed, he was Russian, dammit. A little April snow wasn’t even worth sneezing over.

Still, those hot springs sounded really good right now.

Looking, back, he would question why he hadn’t wondered where Makkachin got off too, and who’d let him out of the room before he’d woken up.

 

* * *

 

Mari watched over the poodle as it jumped around in the snow. It had woken her up early in the morning- it sounded exactly like Vicchan when it whined. There was no way she could ignore it.

She’d know this dog anywhere, Yuuri had put enough pictures of it up over the years it took to convince their parents to buy Vicchan.

It was nice to see a poodle jumping around the hotel again.

And then the poodle jumped square onto Yuuri, who’d just braved the outside, snow shovel in his hand. Mari snorted.

“You’re a terrible sister for laughing at me!” Yuuri yelled, his fingers curling into the brown fur as he scratched at the dogs neck. He froze, looking from her to the dog, and back again.

His mouth dropped open as if to speak, but no words came out. Scrambling forward he shot to his knees and bolted back inside the house, yelling something at their father that Mari heard clearly through the still-open door.

She wondered if the cute foreigner was the same one Yuuri’d been plastering all over his bedroom walls for like, a decade.

She had to call Minako, she was going to love this.

 

* * *

 

Yuuri couldn’t breath as he bolted through the sauna into the hot springs, the humidity filling his lungs in sharp contrast to the chilled air. His hands rubbed the fog off of his glasses without thought as he stumbled into the outdoor area of the spring.  

He almost slipped right off of the rock and into the spring, his arms pinwheeling through the air to stop his momentum.

The soft silver hair was unmistakable, even damp and plastered to Victor’s head as it was. He leaned back in the spring like he owned it, lifting the towel off his eyes at the noise of someone entering the area.

Victor’s eyes met Yuuri’s, and he froze, the soft grin on his face dropped like a shard of glass.

They stared at each other, brown eyes meeting blue.

_Don’t look down, don’t look down._

Yuuri looked down.

“Oh my god, you are naked, I mean, of course you’re naked. You’re in a hot spring, I can come back later- please stop me from talking.” For a moment, Yuuri was blessed with the idea that maybe the magazines had lied, and Victor _didn’t_ know Japanese. Then Victor’s face turned a robust shade of pink.

Of course life wasn’t that simple.

Yuuri shifted his weight onto his other foot, turning to run from this brand new joke the universe was playing on him.

“Wait, Yuuri-”

Skating legend Victor Nikiforov knew his _name._ What the fuck was going on?

Victor lunged across the spring to catch Yuuri’s hand before he could run. “Stay.”

“You are naked.”

“I’m… aware.”

His Japanese was soft and accented, stretching each word as if he expected it to go on for longer than it did.

He blinked and blurted out the first thing that came to mind, “What about your soulmate?”

“I’m here to see him,” Victor looked off to the side, those silver glints of light catching each droplet with a rainbow.

“But why are you here? And not with them?”

Victor blinked slowly, and then stretched out his arm.

“Yuuri, what’s this?”

“It’s a soulmark, did you slip and hit your head getting into the water?”

“No I mean, the tree?”

“ _Iroha-momiji_ , it’s a maple tree.”

“And the snake?”

Yuuri looked down at it, the orange was distinctive with the soft green. “It’s a _yamakagashi_ , a type of grass snake.”

“And the beetle?”

“ _Tamamushi_ , jewel beetle, Victor what is this about?”

Victor’s mouth formed around the word, “ _Tamamushi,”_ and then continued in English, “No wonder I couldn’t find it. I kept googling ‘shiny Japanese beetle’ and it kept giving me results for one that looks like a ladybug.”

“Victor, focus-”

Their eyes met again, and Victor’s went a hazy cloudy grey for a moment as a cloud passed over the sun.

“Don’t you understand?”

Yuuri’s voice took on a hysteric edge, “No?”

“You’re my soulmate, Yuuri. I came here to coach you this season.”

If he were a computer, he would have crashed. Blue screen. Yuuri.exe has crashed, sending Microsoft a report of the error message and searching for a solution, the whole nine yards.

“That, can’t be. I’m- I’m- and you’re, well, you. We never touched-”

Victor jerked back a little. “You don’t remember anything from the banquet?”

“It wasn’t my finest moment, can you blame me for wanting to forget?”

“We danced.”

“We what?”

“Danced, Yuuri, you know, like skating on land?”

“Thanks, I know what dancing is. This- this isn’t possible.”

Victor rolled his eyes and guided Yuuri’s hand right to the swirling lines of his soulmark.

Yuuri felt the jolt through his entire system, head to toe. It was like incoming lightning, pulling at his skin and making the hairs on the back of his neck stand up. Then Victor’s fingers brushed Yuuri’s wrist under the edge of his sleeve.

The contact stole his breath away, rippling through his lungs in a loop of feedback. There was no incoming lightning strike, they were the lightning. 

**_Could I have been more awkward?_ **

_What?_

**_What?_ **

Neither of them moved, neither of them breathed. Yuuri wanted to push his sleeve up, but didn’t want to take his hand off of Victor.

As soon as the thought echoed through his skull, Victor nodded, pushing Yuuri’s sleeve up for him. His fingers tracing over the caps of the waves, white surf churning gently under his fingertips.

Russian filtered through his mind, unidentifiable.

They were speaking _telepathically_.

Yuuri stumbled forward, right into the water of the spring. Clothes and all. He couldn’t let go, he couldn’t even contemplate letting go. Victor caught him as he fell, preventing a truly awkward descent into the water. They were chest to chest, face to face.

_How could he ever have forgotten this?_

**_I’ve got pictures. Christophe had taken them- I tried to talk to you the next day but you were gone._ **

_I panicked._

Victor’s hand cupped Yuuri’s jaw, his thumb smoothing back a strand of his now wet hair.

**_I understand._ **

And the strange thing was, Yuuri believed him, he could feel the emotions through their soulbond, the nervousness Victor had fought to hide. The indecision, feelings that Yuuri was more than familiar with drowning in.

All of it surrounding a mawing void of lonely, tangled feelings of success and self worth.

Victor Nikiforov was human, he was flawed, and he was right in front of him.

It was easy for Yuuri to push past his own anxiety for once; in the face of Victor’s own insecurities, it seemed easier to surmount. He slowly closed the distance between them, pressing his lips to Victor’s, chasing him as Victor pulled back and surged forward, pressing Yuuri up against the edge of the spring.

Victor Nikiforov was human, he was here, and he was _his_. They could figure everything else out later.

 

* * *

 

There was a click, and a flash, and then the sound of a very familiar series of giggles that had plagued his life since they were born.

Well, so much for working things out in their own time.

“If you run, you might catch them before they upload it,” Victor whispered, pulling back and giving Yuuri a little boost out of the water.

“Don’t go anywhere,” Yuuri said, shedding his jacket and leaving it on the ground. The extra weight would just slow him down.

He ran after the three little girls, chasing them out of the men’s side of the hot springs. He managed to catch them before they uploaded the photo to Instagram, and deleted it (after sending a copy to himself).

Axel screeched down the hallway as her retort, “Mom! Yuuri’s kissing gold medalist Victor Nikiforov in the hot springs! He took our phone and our proof!”

His dad leaned over the counter, “Oh good, he seems like such a nice young man.”

Yuuri skidded to a stop in the main room, dripping water all over the tatami mats.

Everyone he knew was in the room, or at least it felt that way. Minako, Yuuko and Takeshi, his parents, all turned to look at him. Without his jacket, the blue waves happily lapping away on his arm were clearly visible to everyone for the first time. At least he wouldn’t have to figure out how to tell any of them individually.

He felt a shimmer of amusement from Victor's side of the bond, and Yuuri got the feeling that his life was about to become very complicated.

**Author's Note:**

> Well, I've had this clonking around ye olde brain and ye olde wips folder for a while. It was originally meant to be longer, but oops. (Also this is unbeta-ed, sorry for that.)
> 
> Check out my profile for links you can find me at.


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